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Influences of the Expertise-Oriented Approach: Uses, Strengths, and Limitations Expertise-oriented approaches, generally referred to by other names, are used extensively in the United States and other countries today. Accreditation efforts are changing and expanding. Governments continue to appoint expert commissions to study issues and make recommendations. Often, such commissions help to protect government leaders from […]

Educational Connoisseurship and Criticism In the previous section, we discussed applications of the expertise-oriented approach in which the experts are not necessarily evaluators. They are experts in something else—the content they are judging. Further, these applications are examples of the expertise-oriented approach, but they were formed and exist independent of the professional evaluation community. In

Funding Agency Review Panels. In the United States, most federal government agencies make use of funding panels—panels of experts in the research area to be funded—to read proposals, discuss them, and make recommendations. Generally, the funding agency has developed criteria for the reviewers and, often, members of the team meet in Washington, DC, or other

First Approaches: Expertise and Consumer-Oriented Approaches 137 accreditation), site visits by a team of external experts, and the districts’ status being affected by the results (http://www.cde.state.co.us/index_accredit.htm). Informal Review Systems Many professional review systems have a structure and a set of procedural guide- lines, and use multiple reviewers. Yet some lack the published standards or speci-

Thus, accreditation is changing and is controversial. Like many evaluations in recent years, the accreditation of colleges and universities in the United States has moved to an increasing use of mixed methods and a greater focus on outcomes. Controversies concern the purpose of these expertise-oriented evaluations, the stakeholders they serve, the measures that should take

Neutrality, Transparency, and Purpose in Accreditation. Other criticisms of the current approach concern reviewers’ neutrality or objectivity and the trans- parency of the process. Evaluations are expected to be based on independent judg- ments. Such independence is intended to lead to more objective, and hence more valid, judgments of quality. Generally speaking, expertise-oriented evaluators should

Accreditation Controversies: Accreditation Politicized. So what can be contro- versial here? As one author defending the system notes, “Who better, one might ask, to evaluate the quality of a college or university than those who work in the field?” (O’Brien, 2009, p. 2). O’Brien argues that the evaluation and the relation- ship between the accrediting

The Process of Accreditation. In the first stage of accreditation, the institution prepares a self-study report describing its mission and its progress toward that mis- sion, as well as how the institution meets the standards of the accrediting body. The second major stage is the core of the expertise-oriented approach: a team of peers, faculty,

Accreditation in the United States is most common for institutions of higher education. 1 We will spend a little time describing this process because it has recently become quite political and controversial, and even for those readers not involved in accreditation, the arguments illustrate the types of political issues and choices that often arise in

Accreditation in Higher Education Today. Accreditation in the United States and in many other countries today meets our criteria for an expertise-oriented, formal review system. The systems make use of an existing structure (generally an inde- pendent regional or national accreditation organization in the United States or governmental agencies in other countries), standards published by